Less bang for your buck
WOULD you mind if we talked for a moment about Eurovision song lyrics? You see, I’ve been taking a closer look at the words to some of this year’s entries – in particular, the ones being performed tonight in the second EUROVISION SONG CONTEST SEMI-FINAL (BBC1, 8pm) – and I think I can detect some sort of pattern.
And maybe, within that sort of pattern, some sort of reflection of our modern world. Sort of.
There used to be a time when the words to Eurovision songs were unashamed gibberish. I’m thinking not just of Lulu’s famously daft Boom Bang-a-Bang but songs such as (these titles are all genuine) Ding-a-Dong, Pump-Pump, Boom Boom Boomerang,A-Ba-Ni-Bi, Da Li Dou, Diggi Loo Diggi Ley, Didai Didai Dai,YammaYamma and Wadde Hadde Dudde Da.
These days, on the other hand, Eurovision lyrics tend to be desperately earnest.Armenia’s contribution tonight, entitled Future Lover, goes: “Oh my Lord, my Lord, my pain, my panic attacks, oh.” (It’s that final “oh” that threatens to push me over the edge.)
In Cyprus’s song, Break A Broken Heart, a sad man called Andrew shrieks: “You lift me up – and leave me in the gutter.”
Icelandic singer Dilja, meanwhile, according to her song Power, is “tired of finding meaning in the dark”.
And Lithuania’s Monika Linkyte, singing Stay, cries: “My heart is bleeding, I need your healing.”
See what I mean? These poor, poor people.What a wretched time they all seem to be having.
Honestly, isn’t there anyone these days whose heart, even occasionally, just goes boom bang-a-bang, boom bang-a-bang, when you are near? Is there no one who, to quote the Netherlands’ chirpy winner of 1975, is of the opinion that: “There will be no sorrow /When you sing tomorrow / And you walk along with your ding-dang-dong”?
Doesn’t sound like it, does it? Deary me, what a sorry state of affairs. Summed up best, perhaps, by a young lad calledVictor Vernicos, performing Greece’s entry tonight, called What They Say. “Insane!” he wails. “And I can’t tell who’s winning.
“Wish this was something I could just ignore.” Well... exactly.
Elsewhere, in AMOL RAJAN INTERVIEWS: PIERS MORGAN
(BBC2, 7pm), Piers insists he’s far nicer than people expect him to be – while the opposite applies to many high-profile figures. “I see so many people in the public eye,” he says, “whose image, which they painstakingly prop up, is completely at odds with the reality of the person they are.
“I’d rather be a pleasant surprise to people than what I see in a lot of those fakes – which is a bitter disappointment.”